


Ready for Round Two

by deliverusfromsburb



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Game Over Timeline, Gen, I'm not tagging all the characters, Kat rags on the combosprites again but I have textual evidence to back myself up, giving Nepeta some spotlight because she's earned it, implied references to suicide sexual assault threats and other stuff that happened in that timeline, nothing direct though, you can't actually prove this didn't happen in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb
Summary: So one time when it was very late and my roommate was at least a little drunk, we came to the mind-blowing realization that nothing in canon explicitly forbids the possibility that Game Over!Jane could just straight up bring the rest of the Game Over characters back to life.  You can't prove that this didn't happen. This changed my entire life.





	Ready for Round Two

After what you've been through, the silence of the dream bubbles is comforting. You sit still and hug your knees. It's nice to be just you, in your own body, with nothing else in the way.

"I'm going to be sick," says the human you were imprisoned with, and he is. Nothing comes up.

You can't blame him. It had been suffocating, and he'd been throwing a fit for most of it. You'd kept quiet, but not because you didn't care. You didn't see the point of screaming when it didn't help. Instead you waited, watched, and at the right moment finally struggled just hard enough that the entity that you'd become hesitated as the Furthest Ring cracked apart and the growing void sucked you in. At least your ghosts woke up here, instead of being trapped in the singularity forever.

Wherever you are now, the black hole hasn't eaten it. The darkness is still illuminated by glittering cracks, but the surface beneath you is whole. There's no sign of Lord English, or the army. Is anyone nearby?

You didn't need to learn much about Heart during your session. Your existing combat skills were enough. Once you'd been out here for a while, you started to think it was about souls. About who people are, deep down. Maybe that's why you can handle a place where you're stripped down to your Self with a thousand others vying for the title. Maybe that's why you're recovering faster from being crushed beneath some other consciousness and buried under an aggregate of other lives. You know who you are. You're the Rogue of Heart, and here, you are useful.

There's a cluster of bright sparks in your inner vision. Souls, glowing with the dim luminescence of the dreaming dead. Part of you would love some solitude, but you also want to interact with people as yourself, to hear people call you by your name. It'll help you settle more firmly back into your skin.

"I feel some people not far away," you say. "I think they're friends." Dave doesn't look at you at first. Maybe you should just leave, but you feel some level of loyalty after what you've been through. "Want to come?"

It takes him a few tries to stand, but he does.

 

You see Karkat and Kanaya with a cluster of the humans. You shouldn't know all their names, but the entity that possessed you rifled through the memories of all Nepetas everywhen, picking whatever scraps it felt like plastering onto itself in an off-key impression. The remnants had been left scattered through your thinkpan, and so you vaguely remember being a sprite in their session. Terezi is there too, sitting next to Vriska. They're leaning into each other's shoulders. Equius isn’t there. He must still be mixed with that AI who does most of the talking. You don’t see Gamzee either, for which you are grateful.

When you approach, Jade grabs Dave by the shirt and starts asking questions about her brother that you know from your time together he can't answer. Kanaya approaches you a little more slowly. "Nepeta," she says. "It's good to see you again. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances."

"Yeah." You tilt your chin a little so you’re looking at her through your bangs, a nervous habit you fall back on sometimes during conversation. It’s been a while since you’ve seen these people. They’re older than you now. Kanaya’s flickering with light, too, an on-off pulse that matches her agitation. All in all, it’s kind of intimidating. "It's not so bad for me, but I thought you guys might win. I'm sorry you didn’t."

She waves that away. Maybe, after so many setbacks, no one ever really thought about victory. "Have you seen Rose out there?"

You remember Rose, the human who'd been nice enough to let you talk to her cat-lusus. It would've been hard to miss her the last time you met, considering her brother screaming "That's my sister, leave her alone, don't touch her" what felt like right into your auditory sponge. "She was like us," you say. "Made into a sprite, and then prototyped too many times. So... she's still alive. Sort of.”

"She's trapped," says Dave, smoothing out the front of his shirt. He looks relieved to be able to change the subject. "And she must be pissed as hell. It's like some Lovecraftian nightmare with a sugar high sets up shop in your brain to make a mockery of everything you hold dear. Thank god none of you saw us, I'd never live it down. Figuratively."

“Are you talking about Trickster Mode?” Jake asks. “I knew that demonic lollipop would come back to haunt us.”

“Lollipop?” you ask, but Dave is already shaking his head.

“That ARquius dude told me about your candy-laced acid trip. The manic cheerfulness checks out, but you were still in control, right? That wasn’t me talking. I know my friends’ first names, for fucks sake.”

You nod. “Whoever it was, they did borrow things. Like my cat puns, which they didn’t ask purrmission fur either. Maybe they thought some of the things were what we wanted; I’m not sure. I might have been happy fighting Lord English, if I could have made that decision myself. But I didn’t get to. I think they knew we were in there, too.”

“Thought pissing me off was funny,” he says. “’His screaming just makes his tantrums funnier,’ _Christ._ Rose has probably worked her way up to some killer insults by now, she hates being talked down to.”

"Then we have to get her out," Kanaya says firmly.

"Hey, I'd be right behind you," Dirk says. The others have drifted over to listen in. It’s not like there’s much else to do – this part of the bubbles doesn’t have anything in the way of scenery. The landscape is the shattered flat black of Equius’ shades. "I could yank her soul out and everything; that's a thing I can do. Problem is, our mobility is limited due to us all being fucking dead."

Jake scratches his head. "Ghosts _can_ come back. That Aranea did."

"The ring," Vriska says, looking up from whatever quiet communion she and Terezi have been locked in. "She stole the ring of life from John somehow."

"That piece of shit?" Dave exchanges a look with Jade. "Did you know it could do that?"

"I didn't know it was magic," she says. "I just thought it was something he'd found somewhere. He didn't like to talk about it." She frowns. "He didn't talk to me a lot that last year."

"Well, there's only one of those," Karkat snaps. "So that's not very useful, unless we want to elect an ambassador to the world of the living or draw up a schedule to trade off every few hours."

"Roxy might be able to make more..." Jade says slowly. "Where is she, anyway?"

You shrug. You would have looked for her; you like Roxy, but you didn't see much of the new session, and you don't have many memories of what went wrong in the old one. 

"She's alive," Terezi says. "Her and John. I saw them before I died. They were going to fix things."

The other Dave, the one that traveled on your session’s meteor, looks around at the shattered dreamscape, the crowd of ghosts. "Not to criticize, but things don't look fixed."

"They're setting things right in a new timeline," she explains. "We're stuck here as rejects from the old one."

"A new timeline," Kanaya repeats. "Going how far back?"

"Our problems really kicked in as soon as your crew arrived," Jake says. "Although I suppose we could have dealt with things if only that troll hadn't gotten her mitts on the ring. That's the crucial moment that truly sealed our fates. As long as you stop that, I’m sure we could manage."

Terezi shakes her head. "Think further. I told them to save Vriska."

Even Vriska looks confused by that. Karkat is the first to speak. "You undid whole sweeps of our lives to fix one battle we fucked up?"

Terezi spreads her hands out. "Look, maybe it wasn't the most rational decision in hindsight, but it's not like you've never made calls based on some sort of emotional impulse."

"And look how that turned out." He shakes his head. "We should've talked to you about that guilt complex earlier so you didn't change the entire universe just to try to deal with it."

"Yeah," meteor-Dave deadpans. "If you'd sat backwards on a chair earlier, this could've all been avoided."

"Shut the fuck up," he says without real rancor. "Well, good luck to those poor bastards."

"I'm right here," Vriska says.

"I notice you haven't actually disagreed."

"No.” She shakes her head, and her long braids shudder. “I met the new me. She's a bitch."

"Good. We're all on the same page here.” Karkat rubs his blank eyes. “I'm almost glad I'm dead."

"You know..." you say.

Terezi glances at you and then away again to continue their squabble. They've never taken you seriously. You were the silly shy girl, who spent her time having fun and playing games while the others made important decisions. But you have memories of time spent with a Life player, and you'd know that color scheme anywhere. "You know," you say again, louder. "I don't think you need a ring to come back to life."

"What do you mean?" That's Dirk. He might not know you well, but he looks desperate enough to look anywhere for input.

"Well...." You shrug. "You've got a Life player right there."

The Life player in question stares at you for a moment and then down at the symbol on her chest, like she’s checking to make sure it’s still there. "You mean...?"

"That can't work, can it?" Jake asks. "It would be too easy."

"Feferi helped us once," Karkat says. "A dead one from a doomed timeline. Her powers still worked. I don't know why I didn't remember sooner."

Jane looks down at her hands. "With a body, I know I could do it. But with a ghost... I don’t know. I guess I could try."

"Just a moment," Kanaya interrupts. "I wasn't convinced by your threats earlier that Life abilities could harm the undead, but if that principle does hold, you might hurt us instead of helping."

"I volunteer," Dirk says immediately.

Jane sighs. "Dirk, really."

"I'm serious. I glitched myself into fucking pixels and I'm still here. I'm indestructible. Do your worst."

"Well in that case…” It takes Jane a moment to catch up with herself. “Wait. You did _what?_ Are you saying the way you got here... you did it to yourself?"

Before Dirk can respond, Terezi interjects. "Save that for later. As the Seer here, I say you give it your best shot. It's a good idea."

"We're not through talking about this," Jane growls. Then she points a blue-laced hand at Dirk and gives it her best shot.

"Well?" Kanaya asks after a moment. "Did it work?"

Dirk looks himself up and down. "I don't feel any different."

"We can't see through your shades, Strider," Jake says.

Dirk hesitates (whether out of reluctance or for theatrical effect you’re not sure) and then pushes the pointy glasses on his face up. You get a good look, as does everybody else. Orange. Humans have such strange eye colors.

"It worked," Jane breathes. “Isn't that something. Gather round, everyone. I'll fix us right up." She turns, looks at Karkat, and then her face changes. "Oh. Oh no."

"What?" Jade follows her gaze and then puts a hand to her mouth. "Ohhhh."

"What?" Karkat's voice rises. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I can only do this once," Jane says. "Once per person. And I've already done you."

"What are you talking about?" Terezi asks. "Karkat, are you telling me you got yourself killed that quickly? And I missed it?"

"Don't blame me!" He points at Jane, who takes a step back. "Blame her. Harley too, it was her idea. Crocker here was just the willing hand with the fork.”

"The two of them decided to demonstrate Jane's abilities," Kanaya explains. "They were following the Empress's orders at the time."

"That's right," Jade says quickly. "I was bad then. And." She bites her lip. "And I was angry."

"So we can't hold that against them, right?" Jake says, with a smile that looks unnaturally stiff. "Let bygones be bygones, right Jane? After all, I've already forgotten that little interaction in the jail cell. In fact, forget I mentioned it!"

"What did Jane do?" Dirk asks. Jane groans and covers her eyes. "What the hell are you all talking about?"

"That's what I want to know," meteor-Dave adds. "Jade, you _killed_ someone? What the fuck happened to you in the last three years?"

"What happened to you, defending the aliens?" Dave snaps back. "Since when are they really on our side? No offense," he adds, glancing over at you. "You seem ok, I guess."

You roll your eyes. "I appreciate it, human scum."

Meteor-Dave has ignored this aside. "I know you were off bleeding instead of being useful during our game, but they _are_ on our side, you outdated fucking museum specimen."

"The tiara top," you hear Jane saying to no one in particular. "I was going to apologize and explain, we just didn't have time-"

"Will all of you shut up?" Karkat demands. "I'm a little more preoccupied with the pressing matter of my mortality than whatever hangups you've got with each other. You can all pile into the confession booth later if that'll make you happy."

"But Karkat," Terezi says, "it's like watching one of your memos in real life."

"Will you _ever_ let the memos go?"

"Like I said," Vriska interrupts, "there's the ring."

You took a step back when she spoke - your last memories of her aren't great. But this one seems milder, though maybe that's the dreambubbles nipping at the edges of her soul, like they do to everyone eventually.

Karkat doesn’t seem convinced either. “Oh, you’re going to help?”

“What, am I not allowed to do that?” She struggles to her feet to get in his face. “I’m very helpful.”

He doesn’t back away. These days, he’s taller than her. Plus, the remains of mascara run in black tear streaks down her cheeks. It doesn’t help her in an intimidation attempt. “Yeah, if I needed help falling off a cliff, I’d make sure to call you so you could give me a push.”

“Fine, don’t use the magic ring that brings people back to life, which solves the problem you’re all so upset about. Vriska Serket mentioned it, so it must be bad news.”

“I mean,” you begin. Once, you would have kept your head down. But it has been a long eternity. Someone wrenched you out of the afterlife to be her wife, which strikes you as very presumptuous. The entity controlling you had been interested in experience, like a wiggler fresh from the brooding caverns drinking in the world. Maybe a good Rogue of Heart should have sacrificed themselves to the creation of someone new. The temptation had been there, pressing onto your thinkpan, promising an escape from your troubles. But with two deaths and the destruction of your universe under your belt, you think you want to stay yourself, or to become someone new on your own. Someone who speaks up. None of the other people here seem content to be erased. When you’d been dragged into battle, you’d seen whole cohorts of ghosts destroyed, and for what? For the living Vriska to decide on a pose to strike when she unveiled her weapon? You are done with being used. “You were getting a bunch of ghosts to die for you in two different timelines, which does make it hard to trust your motives. But maybe you’re sorry about that?”

It’s been a while since you’ve been the target of a highblood ‘did the dirt just speak to me’ stare. There’s not as much real effort behind it as there could be, though. “It was for a mission that was very important. I don’t see what there is to be sorry about.”

Terezi pulls away from her sister a little bit. “Wait, killing ghosts? What have you been doing out here?”

“Oh, you’re going to condemn me again now?” She backs away from the rest of you, hands curled into fists. The fauna of Alternia move like that when you’ve cornered them but they’re not ready to go down.  You’ve found that’s often when they’re the most dangerous.  “That was fast. Hey, why are there two human Time players here? Hmm, that seems familiar. Almost like it’s related to some unethical practical joke you pulled.”

“Yeah, if I’m part of this,” Dave starts.

“You’re not,” Karkat says, cutting him off. “Pipe down, Dave two.”

“Oh, you did _not_ -”

“Enough!” You’re used to Kanaya being reserved, but it seems she’s used up her patience. She’d been pacing back and forth while the others argued, and now she’s stepped in between them, skin blazing. “We have all made mistakes. If we’d dealt with some of them earlier, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation. I am sure we will need time to discuss all of them later, but right now we have to fix our biggest one yet, or the rest will be irrelevant. Karkat, we are getting you the ring. I don’t care if Lord English himself was the one making the suggestion at this point, as long as it’s a good one. Vriska, where is it?”

“Where is what? The ring?” Vriska shrugs, fingers uncurling. “I don’t know.”

Before that can start another chain of yelling, Terezi says, “The Empress killed Aranea, I saw that much. So it might be up for grabs again. It likes to vanish and reappear."

"But where?" Dirk asks. "Do you think it would be near her ghost?"

Now it’s Jake’s turn to ball his hands up. "Are you saying we could go beat up that spider troll's ghost? Because I am ALL for a rematch. Don't bring me back yet, Jane. That way if she tries to kill me again she won't be able to."

"I could find her, maybe," Terezi says. "This place is made of memories, so if I follow her mind... With the ring so smashed up, there aren’t that many places to hide."

"How do we tell she's the right one?" Jade asks. She’s latched onto this new subject eagerly, probably to escape the last one. "We can't just jump on every version of this troll, can we?"

"I can tell," you say. You have a knack for that out here. You can strike up a conversation with one Tavros and later pick him out of a crowd of twenty, even if his outfit is different. If anything, you’re surprised the others mix them up. Once you know a little bit about how the person has changed, they don't wear their face the same. This Aranea - what she did will show.

“Sounds like a plan,” Dirk says. “I like it."

"You'll have to sit this one out," Jane reminds him. "You're mortal again, and I can only save you once. Perils of being the guinea pig, I'm afraid. And I _am_ officially team leader. I think it's time I actually lived up to that. Metaphorically, if I must."

He scowls but doesn't argue.

Jade turns to Terezi. "You said there's a new timeline, right? Does that mean there’s a new group of all of us?"

"That's right. It's up to that set to win now."

"I doubt they'd like us crashing the party," Dirk says. "God knows I have enough problems fighting myself, and it looks like that's a family trait."

"Can't do it no matter what," says Dave. "The Furthest Ring is neutral territory, but once we're in the same Skaia-supervised universe, doomed double rules apply. We'll get picked off."

"Great, more complications." Karkat throws up his hands. "Then where do we go, even if we do come back?"

"It's a big multiverse," Kanaya says. "There must be somewhere."

"There must be somewhere," Jake agrees. "I'm not going to sit here in the dark for eternity because some troll got a bee in her bonnet about how our story was supposed to go. I was never that concerned about winning the game on its terms anyway, as long as we made it out ok. I don't even know what the victory state is supposed to be."

"Then it's agreed," Jane says. "We find Aranea, get that ring, I bring us all back, and we go somewhere. Somewhere better."

"And we find Rose," Kanaya adds.

"Definitely," says meteor-Dave. "We can call up John and Rose's mom too, see if they want to hang out with us losers or stick with the winning team. Maybe we can get shared custody."

“If we see other people…” You almost trail off, but they’re looking at you, so you complete the thought. “Maybe we should let them come too, if they want. It seems fair.”

Jane nods. “I’m willing to try. The one time rule might not count for different versions of the same person.”

"Can I come?" Vriska asks. You’re surprised she was polite enough to ask.

Terezi links arms with her. "Wouldn't have it any other way, sister."

"Hold on," Karkat says. "I’m still technically leader of the Alternian band of chucklefucks, which means I get to make that kind of decision. You're not going to try another megalomaniacal plot as soon as our backs are turned, are you? If I recall correctly, you got killed for a _reason_.”

She juts her chin forward, a bit of her old vigor returning to her voice. "I'm not like that anymore.”

"I guess we can keep an eye on you if you’re lying."

Terezi pinches the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "Karkat, do you think you could be a little bit less of a dick if you really tried?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm a little on edge. I've been _murdered_."

"We've all been murdered," Kanaya says. "Or most of us, at least. Just establishing that for the record."

"And it _sucks_.”

“Maybe I could be a little grabby, but I was trying to help, whatever you think of me.” She directs that to all of you, like one of Terezi’s favorite legislacerators parading in front of a jury. “I’m not stupid, I can take a hint like getting killed and then abandoned repeatedly to see that that doesn’t work out for me. When I got to grab a whole universe, I turned horrible. I’ve learned my lesson, ok? I’m done with all that. Do you want me to grovel? To bow and scrape and beg to prove that I’m deserving enough to be alive? Is that what you think is moral?”

None of the human look real comfortable with the way this is going.  “Look,” Jane says. “I don’t know what she’s done, but I do know I can’t in good conscience cast the first stone.  So maybe we should treat this endeavor as a trial run to work out the kinks in our own personal morality.  Would that work for everyone?”

You look her over. You don't know what she's been doing since you saw her last, but the person behind the face is different now. It makes you think of a drawing in that smudgy, formless state when you’re still working out the details. On its way to being something, but not there yet, tenuous enough that a stray line would ruin the entire picture. It’s the point where you have to make a decision about what the final product ought to be. If Vriska has to make that decision soon, she might as well have good references to go off of, right?

No one has said anything, preferring to instead cast shifty glances at each other. You don’t need superpowers of any kind to sense the tension. "Well," Terezi says at last. "That's settled, then. We'll get some vengeance, and then we'll figure out what to do next. How's that for a plan?"

"It's actually three quarters of a plan, because some leetspeaking weirdo wrote a four instead of an A, but otherwise it sounds good," says meteor-Dave. She sticks her tongue out at him.

Jane nods and uncaptchalogues an enormous fork. That’s right – she _is_ an heiress, technically, and she handles the official weapon with ease. "It sounds good to me too. Let's go win this game on our terms."


End file.
